PLASTIC MARTYR

MAYA WEEKS

This is a performance in which i surround myself sitting with most of my weight on my left buttcheek and legs folded to right side in a “Moomins” dress, not trying to play up my gender but not trying to look as masculine as every other day of the three months that i have lived in Iowa, where, encouraged by lack of single-stream recycling i made an attempt to quit single-use plastic cold turkey, excepting yogurt which, due to too many digestive issues & yeast infections i was more than reluctant to quit(1); and, because i am a glutton remaining to be convinced by my frangible relationship with the Iowa river that veganism is the only acceptable reaction to factory farming & industrial agriculture, cheese; and, because i am an ARTIST and i have to save things, tape, and pens, and lip balm i carried with me from California, Cornwall etc. and my tool kit from the Shellmound IKEA ca. 2011 and the iPod that broke after my last trip to San Francisco, to arrange all these various plastics the likes of which are accumulating in the oceans’ various gyres and more of which are shipped to China than recycled domestically(2) on the wooden floor of this full house in which Cassandra Gillig has just told me at our first meeting about the plastic-making machines of her suburb to read this poem (“AMTRAK FUCK THE POLICE”) unable to tell if anyone is feeling anything on the evening of 8 November 2014.

(1) I tried to make my own yogurt from milk in glass bottles as i had in the Bay but because in Iowa City there was no milk to be bought in glass bottles and the organic milk was only sold in plastic-coated cartons, it was actually most ecological to buy yogurt by the (giant, plastic) tub—although i quickly found that i preferred the organic yogurt made WITHOUT pectin which only came in a smaller tub and myself making more and more an exception.

(2) Did u know: the rounded triangle “recycling” symbol does not necessarily mean that an item is recyclable but rather is a “resin identification code” whose number indicates which polymer/s it is made from?!